What might the hands-free law accomplish?

Unless you have been living in a cave, you are probably aware that California’s hands-free cellphone laws go into effect at midnight. It appears that different agencies may enforce the law differently, according to my colleagues David Pierson and Hector Becerra in a story at The Times’ website.

First, the gist of the laws: you cannot hold a phone and have a conversation when driving, although you can touch the phone to dial. If you are 16 or 17, you can’t use a phone period. And, the law fails to address text messaging. Here’s a link to a Q&A I wrote recently on the laws.

Second, I wanted to address the most important point of such a law: will it make the roads safer? My former colleague Myron Levin, whose story in March in The Times has this juicy detail . . .

8 crack dealers shielded by S.F. walk away

An effort by San Francisco to shield eight young Honduran crack dealers from federal immigration officials backfired when the youths escaped from Southern California group homes within days of their arrival, officials said Monday.

The walkaways are the latest in a string of embarrassments for city officials who are protecting illegal-immigrant drug dealers from federal authorities and possible deportation because of San Francisco’s 1989 declaration that the city is a sanctuary for undocumented immigrants.

Until recently, San Francisco flew juvenile illegal immigrants convicted of drug crimes to their home countries rather than cooperate with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, a practice that drew national attention when The Chronicle reported it Sunday. . .

Serious patient errors at California hospitals disclosed in state filings

SACRAMENTO — Last October, a technician at the children’s hospital at Stanford University improperly connected a ventilator hose, accidentally pumping too little oxygen into a 9-day-old infant’s lungs.

A month later, technicians at Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz unintentionally placed a CT scan of one patient into the electronic file of another, leading physicians to remove the wrong person’s appendix.

Last March, Virginia Fahres, 76, died at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center in Pomona after a nurse gave her two drugs, neither of which her doctor had prescribed. . .